My Secret Notebook From The Puerto Rico Mastermind

Want to see my top take-aways from the recent mastermind that I was at, with some of the top thought leaders in the world?

On today’s episode Russell talks about some of the things he learned during his recent trip to Puerto Rico for Brendon Burchard’s mastermind group. Here are some of the amazing things you should listen for in this episode:

Why Russell almost didn’t go to the mastermind group, and how Collette convinced him that they should go.

What some of the gold nuggets were that Russell picked up from people like, David Bach, Ethan Willis, and Rachel Hollis.

And what mastermind group Russell recommends for you to be a part of for you to get the most success with your business.

So listen here to find out what kind of awesome tidbits Russell picked up at the Puerto Rico Mastermind.

Full Episode Transcript

What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. This episode I want to bring you behind the scenes of some of the cool takeaways, nuggets and ideas I got at the most recent Puerto Rico Mastermind with Brendon Burchard and a whole bunch of other amazing people.

Hey everyone, I hope you guys are doing awesome. I know I’ve been telling you guys for the last couple of episodes that I was going to tell you about this amazing trip we had to Puerto Rico and kind of pull you into some of the cool details behind the scenes of what happened. I wish I had everything recorded and I could just sell you guys access to the videos, because that would be amazing for me and for you and for everybody. But unfortunately there were no video cameras allowed. So all I had was my notebook and my thoughts, so that’s what you’re going to get today. I hope you guys are okay with that.

Kind of the preface of what this event was, so if you’ve been listening to the podcast for a while I did this episode last summer, or last, I don’t even know when it was, it was probably 8 or 9 months ago about this secret illuminati mastermind meet up meeting that I had in Wyoming. We flew out and we took helicopters and all these amazing business owners were there. And it was run by Brendon Burchard and there was a whole bunch of, the list of people that were there was awesome.

So I had a good time, learned a bunch of really cool things. And it was kind of almost more like a, I don’t know, I’m used to marketing meetings. I’m a hardcore marketing dude who just wants to know marketing and that’s all I care about. And then I’m around all these personal development people and they are all talking about other things and it turned into this event where we’re crying and changing our emotions and all sorts of crazy stuff that I’m not used to. But I really enjoyed it and had a great time.

Anyway, now fast forward 8 months later and they were going to do a second meeting. And I wanted to go and then they were going to bring our spouses and stuff, which I thought would be really cool. But then literally the day the event starts is the same day we were getting home from our Disney Cruise with our kids and I’d already been away for like 10 days. And I was just like, I can’t do it. So I basically told Brendon, “Hey, we can’t go.”

Then fast forward to Funnel Hacking Live, I don’t think Brendon got my email or my text or however I told him because he didn’t know about it. So backstage, I can’t remember if it was before or after his presentation, he’s like, “Dude, you’re coming to Puerto Rico right?” I’m like, “No.” and he’s like, “What? You’re not coming? It’s going to be amazing.” And starts naming off all the people and my beautiful wife, Collette was next me and one of the people that was at last year’s meeting was Dave Hollis and his wife is Rachel Hollis.

And if you’ve read, or your spouse, I guess your wife or spouse or whatever has read Girl, Wash Your Face or Girl, Stop Apologizing, that’s written by Rachel Hollis. It was the number two bestselling book all of last year. The only person that beat her was Michelle Obama, so I think she cheated, but who knows.

Anyway, the book’s awesome. I read it first, I had Collette read it, I had tons of people in my office read it. Men and women. And it’s an amazing book. And she’s blown up and just doing a bunch of stuff. Collette loves her, we listen to her podcast, we listen, her podcast is called the Rise podcast and her and Dave have a podcast together called Rise Together, which is a really great couples podcast. It’s just awesome.

So over the last 7 or 8 months since the last event, we’ve really, not directly connected with them, but through their content and through what they do, I’ve had just an amazing time with that. So Dave said, or Brendon said, you know, he’s naming all the people, he said Dave. And Collette’s like, “Well, is Rachel coming.” And Brendon’s like, “Yeah, Rachel’s going to be there too.” And Collette looks at me, she’s like, “We’re going.” I’m like, “Oh great. How am I going to fit this into our busy schedules?”

But we decided to go and I’m super grateful we did. We’re lucky, Brent and Amber Coppieters went on the Disney Cruise with us, their kids and our kids, and then we got back from the cruise, we just pulled into Miami or whatever and they jumped into a plane with our kids and flew them and their kids, like 9 kids, my kids and their kids, flew them home. And then Collette and I jumped into a plane and flew to Puerto Rico.

And we got there a day early so we had a chance to go to the spa there, which was insane. So many cool stories. And then the next day the masterminding happened. We had a chance to hang out with everybody, get to know them all, just had a really good time.

Anyway, I’m just going to kind of go through my notes here and pull out some of the cool things I got that I think you guys will benefit from. I may remember some of the people, some of these thoughts may be just completely disjointed, but I’m going to share them anyway. If you listen to my podcast, I’ll do whatever I want. And hopefully everyone will get some value, some gold out of one of the nuggets that I’m dropping behind.

Alright, so with that said, I’m going to jump into my notes. So the one thing that Brendon had us do at the very beginning of the mastermind which is fascinating, he talked about a lot of times we set goals or to do’s of things we want to accomplish and he said, “Instead of thinking of things as to-do’s we need to start thinking of things like scenes.” He said, if you take a timeline and go backwards in time, what are the scenes that are most memorable of your life.

So I started thinking, I remember when I won my state title as a junior in high school. That was just a scene in my life that I dreamt about, it was amazing, it happened and I can always go back. That was an amazing thing. My senior year, when I took second place high school nationals, I became an all American. That is a scene in my life. When I served a mission for my church, some experiences there are different scenes. And when I met my wife and I proposed to her and we got married and then when the twins were born, when we got pregnant with the twins after not being able to get pregnant for months and months.

All these things are scenes in your life, right. When you look at a scene that’s like colorful and beautiful and you can feel it, you can experience it, it’s an emotional thing. So he said, make a timeline and in the back right all the scenes you remember in your life that were impactful that shifted your destiny. So I’m kind of writing those out.

And then he said, “What I want to do for now, is write all these different, in the timeline, have all these ticks in the timeline. And then instead of having a goal, I want you to project a scene in the future.” And he said, for example instead of “I’m going to make a hundred million dollars this year.” It’s like, “When we hit our goals we’re going to go on this amazing…’ Project the scene and make it colorful and beautiful. And some of you are visualizing, and try to visualize and imagine the experiences and the celebrations you have with that thing.

And what happens when you don’t just have a goal and you create these scenes in your mind of what it’s going to be like when you accomplish the goal, or the journey of the goal, whatever it means, then that thing draws a meaning to the goal. Instead of just being a goal, like why do you want to have a goal of getting into the Two Comma Club, I don’t know. The reason why someone in my world would want to get into the Two Comma Club is they were at Funnel Hacking Live, they saw people on stage and they visualized that next year they were going to be onstage getting that award. Holding it up and getting the picture taken with me, that kind of thing.

They were projecting a scene of their goal, and that scene in their mind draws meaning to the goal, which is the thing that actually draws you to it. And the better you can describe this scene the better, the more real it becomes. So describing it to yourself or your spouse or on your podcast or whatever. But the power of that is really, really cool.

But what he had us do was make a timeline and back in time what are the scenes that happened, and then what were the meanings that I drew from those scenes? Then moving forward, what are the scenes that I want to experience? And then trying to visually experience those and see those, which was really, really cool. So that was something cool I learned from Brendon.

Let’s see, I can’t remember who this one, oh, this was Craig Clemons who was one of the greatest, probably one of the greatest living copywriters right now. He’s amazing and he was talking about the different products in his product line. He’s got this huge media company that’s killing it, doing crazy numbers.

And he said, “If you look at all the..” he published different doctors and their products and books and supplements and things like that and he says, “My goal in marketing is to rewrite the story that’s inside of people’s heads, right.” So the reason why people are struggling in any area of life, is there’s this story in their head. He says, “My job, through my copy and videos and product and everything is to rewrite the story in their head.” And as he said that I just wrote, I wrote down, “Rewrite the story.” And then I wrote next to it with a big starburst around it, “New opportunity” if you read the Expert Secrets book we talked about new opportunities.

It’s all about that, right. If I had to get somebody to shift from the vehicle that they’re in right now to get them into the vehicle that I know is going to get them to their future, I’d figure out what are the false beliefs they have? What’s that story in their head? And then my job is, as a marketer and a story teller, is to rewrite that story. And you do that by writing a better story, crafting a story that they will then believe. And when you do that, then they will follow you. And I just thought it was kind of cool that he looked at what he does as a copywriter, he’s rewriting stories in people’s heads. I was like, “Yes, I get that. That’s what I do too. It’s so exciting.”

Okay, alright I’m going to keep going through these notes here. Oh, one thing. So Tom and Lisa Billaboo, they are the founders initially of Quest Nutrition, which is Quest bars, which is one of my favorite companies out there. They ended up getting it valued at a billion dollars and then they sold their stuff, and then they started this thing called impact theory, which is an amazing podcast, youtube channel and a bunch of stuff.

But it was funny because we were going on this hike, and everyone was doing it because we were supposed to, but no one really wanted to. We wanted to go back and we wanted to do mastermind and stuff, but we felt obligated to do it. And everyone was kind of sitting here, we were at the halfway point of like, “Do we keep going on or do we stop?” We were having some car issues and some people were getting sick, so we kind of pulled over.

And he said something that was really powerful. He said, “I always ask my wife this. I say, “what are your selfish desires? Just tell me what are your selfish…do you want to do this? Do you not?’ and she says ‘My selfish desires I’d rather do blah blah blah.” He’s like, “Cool, I’d rather do that too.” And it was pretty cool.

So he asked us all, “What’s your selfish desire? If you’re being selfish what’s your desire, what do you really want?” And then we all told it. So it was like, oh, we all wanted the same thing. So then we just did it. When most of the time we don’t tell people our selfish desires because we sound selfish and we hold it back and we don’t just use that as a tool. And because of that half the time we end up going on these long rants or long problems that become bigger and bigger and bigger because we don’t just communicate what we really, really want.

And he said that’s a tool they use all the time when they’re both trying to decide something like, “I don’t know what to do. What do you want to do?” That kind of indecision, he stops and says, “What’s your selfish desire. If you could do anything, selfishly, what would it be.” And then boom, that’s how they are able to go and figure out that’s what they’re going to do. But it was just kind of a cool tool for me that I thought was awesome.

Okay, gall I could spend days going through all this. I’m trying to find some of the really, really important things that I think will have the biggest impact for you guys here. Sorry, I just gotta make sure. Okay, one of them David Bach was there. If you know David Bach, he’s written like a billion books. They’re all like New York Times bestsellers like a million times over. And he’s got a new book coming out called the Latte Factor and I think it’s his first new book in a while. And he was asking questions on how to launch a book.

And low and behold Mrs. Rachel Hollis jumped up, whose sold more books than anyone on planet earth last year and she’s like, “This is what I did.” And I’m like, ‘Oh” freakishly writing notes as fast as I could. And it was interesting, she started going through this. It made me so happy.

Some of you guys know I’m writing the Traffic Secrets book right now, and in chapter two it’s called Dream 100. And she never said the word Dream 100, but what she explained was the Dream 100 concept to a T. She said, “What are the tribe that my women are already in? And we do tribe infiltration.” So she said, ‘What network marketing companies are they in? What Facebook groups? What Instagram channels? All these kind of things. What hashtags are they following.” And they find those people and say, “Who are the tribe owners that I’ve got to infiltrate? Who do I need to become friends with?”

So she said, they basically went to instagram and anyone that had over 200,000 followers they would just DM them and be like, ‘Hey this is so and so, can we talk.” And it just started going crazy messaging anyone that had over 200,000 followers to build up their dream 100, their list of influencers, they’re tribe, the tribe leaders. Then they’re whole job is tribe infiltration. Anyway, I thought was so awesome. They pre-sold 200,000 copies of her new book, Girl, Stop Apologizing, before it went live, which is crazy.

And then Lewis Howells jumped in and talked about how he sold his book. What he did is he went and found the 20 biggest podcasts, not the little ones, but big podcasts that moved the needle in book sales, and went and did in depth, really amazing interviews with those people on the books to get his book to become a New York Times Bestseller. So it wasn’t like, ‘I need 500 podcast interviews.” But what are the 20 most strategic, best podcasts I could be on that are going to drive a ton of book sales, which would be awesome.

Alright, that was some cool stuff. So many good things here. Ethan Willis who is one of the partners at Growth.com, he talked about purpose management which was really, really cool. I’m not going to go too deep into that because, it was just like, “What’s process management? What’s your purpose management? What is your purpose? What’s the reason why you’re doing this thing and that thing?” really going deep and remembering your purpose. He said, “If I were to die in 3 years what would I have to do to get…right now it’s like, based on that, what should you do right now? Go and do those things.” So good, so many, I wish, he went on this 20 minute rift that was just, I wish I could record, that would have been amazing for everyone.

A lot of these are just ideas I wrote down of like cool things we could do as we’re launching books and things like that. Yeah, I think I might be done with the stuff I’m going to share. Looking if there’s anything else really big that pops out. Okay, one thing. I hope she doesn’t mind that I’m sharing this. But Rachel Hollis’ big question was like, “Okay, we had all these goals and all these dreams and then we hit them all. Now what? Do we try to make more money? Do we just, are we okay with that? What’s okay?” I think that’s a question a lot of people, especially religious people, that we ask, “Is it okay that I’m doing this? Is it okay that I’m making more money? Should I be content? Should I….” You know what I mean?

And a couple of things were really good that were said to her. One is that when you start looking at these things that are happening to you, the phrase I wrote down says, “It is not mine, I am a steward.” So I look at that like, this business, this money, it’s not mine, it’s God’s and I’m a steward of it. So if you look at it from that way, it’s like I’m a steward of it. I’ve been called to do these things, then you start looking at it differently. If I’m a steward of this money, or this platform, or this role, what does he want me to do? Does he want me to shut it down and shrink? No, that’s not what he would want. He would want you to magnify it right, bring your calling out and do the best you can and stuff like that.

And then the second thing is like, am I going to run out of ideas? What’s going to happen? And it’s like, if you are the steward then, and it’s coming from God and if you are the steward, then he’s going to keep giving you light and knowledge because you’re the steward of this thing that you’re doing and you’re doing the right things, you’re moving forward.

A couple of other phrases I wrote down, “It’s because of you, it’s through you.” So it wasn’t you that did, it’s not because I’m great that this thing happened through me. And I see that all the time in our community. So many good things. Mother Theresa said, “I am the pencil.” I’m not the one doing the work, I’m the instrument that’s writing the thing.

Anyway, I think that’s the core part of the notes I was going to share. But I hope that gives you guys a couple of nuggets from my mastermind group. And if you’re not part of a mastermind, go and be part of one, plug into one. You should definitely join the Two Comma Club X one because that’s the best one. Or my inner circle, because that’s the next level which is even better. But as of right now, you can only sign up at Funnel Hacking Live. I think eventually we’re going to open them up to the mass public, but for right now it’s closed down.

So do what you can to get into a new mastermind group. And I’d recommend getting the Two Comma Club X mastermind group, it’s an amazing program. In fact, we have our first event of the year with those guys coming up next week, which is exciting.

Anyway, I’m going to go. I’ve got so many more things I want to share with you but the night is young. Actually, the night is not young, the night is late and I gotta go. So appreciate you guys all, thanks so much for everything and I will talk to you on the next episode.

Who is Russell Brunson?

Over the past 10 years, Russell has built a following of over a million entrepreneurs, sold hundreds of thousands of copies of his books, popularized the concept of sales funnels, and co-founded a software company called ClickFunnels that helps tens of thousands of entrepreneurs quickly get their message out to the marketplace.